


Got A Moon, And A Billion Stars

by Lapin



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: But not quite, Gen, M/M, soulmate fic, soulmate words
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 06:35:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18515899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapin/pseuds/Lapin
Summary: Red Harvest is young when the words appear on his side."I know you can understand me."





	Got A Moon, And A Billion Stars

**Author's Note:**

> ...IDEK WTF I'm doing anymore.

Red Harvest is young when the words appear. 

He’s helping his brother with his hair, Wild Horse eating something while Red Harvest braids the brightly colored leathers Wild Horse favors in the long braid he wears his hair in. It feels funny, almost a burn, but almost cold too, all down his left side.

“What’s wrong with you?” Wild Horse asks, when Red Harvest steps back. 

It’s summer, hot. Neither of them are wearing a shirt, so when Wild Horse turns around on the felled tree he’d been sitting on, he sees what Red Harvest sees. 

They write themselves out easily, quickly. It’s spindly and delicate, when it’s done, but that means little when Red Harvest cannot _read_ it. 

“Oh, you got yours,” Wild Horse says, ripping off another bite of pemmican, not very worried. He never worried about anything though. His own mark is on his collarbone, easily seen now, but Wild Horse’s is an image; four black birds, two perched, and the other two taking flight. Everyone else in their tribe who has marks have ones like Wild Horse’s. Not _writing_. 

In the end, Wild Horse tracks down Gray Cloud, sitting around with some others, mending clothing. Gray Cloud had been to the white men’s church, for a time, and could read their writing. 

She squints at it. “Lots of them have ones like this,” she says. “Preacher told me it’s supposed to be the first thing they say to you. That’s their way. Nonsense, you ask me. Lots of things their people say to everyone they meet. Preacher said they can feel it though, same as us. It’s how they know. Always seemed like too much trouble.”

Gray Cloud tends to talk too much, and Wild Horse isn’t very interested when she does. Red Harvest can tell from how he rolls his eyes. Red Harvest isn’t either, not really. He doesn’t care about their ways. He asks, “What does it say?” so she’ll get to the point. 

“Reads ‘I know you can understand me’,” she says, and goes back to her work. Eyes on her needle, she adds, “It’s really pretty handwriting. Never could get mine that delicate. Yours must be a careful soul.”

To Red Harvest, it doesn’t matter, especially if it’s written in English. Red Harvest has no intention of involving himself with one of them, even if something beyond him seems to think it can force him that way. Red Harvest isn’t accustomed to being told what to do, and he’s even less familiar with obeying. 

That trait does him few favors as he grows older, really, but his nature is what it is. 

“Some of the others can write in English,” Wild Horse suggests, when Red Harvest’s around sixteen. “Not just the white ones. And even if they are white, some of them aren’t so bad.” Red Harvest eyes his brother. His brother, who has proudly killed and scalped more than one white man who’d gotten on his bad side. “Any man with pretty writing probably isn’t the kind I need to kill, is all,” Wild Horse concedes. 

His brother has always known him so well. 

He knows him so well, that when his horse is shot out from under him, and Red Harvest, far ahead, sees, his brother fires an arrow at Red Harvest. _Run_ , he’s saying to Red Harvest. _Run, or I’ll kill you myself, fool._

It had only been meant to be a scouting trip, looking for the herd. 

He rides, and does not see his brother overtaken, does not see his brother killed. But he knows it’s happened, when even as far as he’s ridden, he still hears his brother’s horse scream when they finally end its life.

Wild Horse knew Red Harvest well enough to know he would have come back. He would have died with his brother. But Wild Horse would not have wanted that. And so he didn’t allow it. 

The stars turn. Red Harvest shaves his head, and stops wearing the colorful leathers he’s worn since his hair was long enough to do so, an imitation of his brother. He wears it in a short row, on top of his head, like some of the other men in the tribe do, but he doesn’t adorn it. The leathers he once wore, he gives for his nephew and niece, and their mother’s sisters plait their hair with them.

He says little to most, and nothing at all to the two of them. He has no words for them. 

The words on his side stay under his buckskin. He either thinks of nothing else, or forgets they’re there, in equal turns. 

_“I know you can understand me.”_

He can’t help but hear the words as an accusation, the same way all white men said similar things. Gray Cloud had said the handwriting was pretty, on that day. One of their ones who lived in town, most likely. The ones with too-pale skin and nothing useful in their heads, their hands. A joke.

Red Harvest has never had the nature of doing what he was told, unless it was Wild Horse telling him, and only that one time. So whatever joke the world is playing, Red Harvest decided long ago he will not play along. 

The elders suggest that Red Harvest follow a different path after he shows that nature a little too often. He looks at them, these old men, and he catches the way they all, at some point or another during the meeting, look to his left side. Not only his nature then, but the worry over what his nature might bring.

His father doesn’t disagree, the sun setting as his father stirs up the fire to cook the potatoes he’s got nestled in the wood. Red Harvest had not expected him to, not really. 

“Your brother would not have wanted you to carry his death with you,” his father says, looking into the fire. 

Wild Horse had been dead for over two winters now. And his father is wrong. Red Harvest does not carry Wild Horse’s death. The opposite is true. Wild Horse seemed to take all that Red Harvest carried when he was killed, leaving him all but empty. He had taken all but one thing.

The words written on his side have never changed over the years, merely grown with him. He can read some English now. Gray Cloud had taught him as best she could, but he speaks it easily enough. That’s what’s useful. They alone feel like the only thing he has left to carry as his own. He doesn’t want them, not really, but it’s still better to have something than nothing, even if it is just something he finds a burden.

He watches the stars that night, listens to the children running around. His niece and nephew catch his eye, both still so young. Neither can be blamed for not remembering their mother, and by the time they are grown, he doubts they will remember Wild Horse much either. Their aunts, Calling Bird’s sisters, call for them and their own children, likely to get them ready for sleep. 

They probably won’t remember him at all, he realizes, and knows he’s made his decision. 

His mother sees him off a few mornings later, after he’s packed his horse. His father is sitting with the elders, and the rest of the old men. If he knows Red Harvest is leaving this morning, he never said.

“Maybe this is how your path leads you to them,” she suggests, gently, looking at his left side.

“You hope Wild Horse died so that one of them would spit in my face?” he asks her. 

He knows white men, knows how they are. And he knows himself, knows that it will be a man who speaks these words to him. A white man who will look at Red Harvest’s skin, and turn away, or worse. 

She pats his horse’s neck after he swings up on to the mare’s back. “I only hope you find peace,” she says, sorrowful now. “If they bring you that, or at the very least, some happiness, I will not be sad for it.” She touches his leg, squeezes, then steps back, lets him leave.

The first night away, he lies under the open sky, the spring wind not chilled enough for him to bother with shelter. His horse sleeps easily, the pair of them having put some distance between himself and his tribe. Red Harvest does not have the same ease, though. He’s never slept easily, in any sort of situation. 

The clouds move over the stars, and he watches them. Wild Horse used to make up shapes for them, and stories to go with them. He’d usually talk so long, either Red Harvest or someone else in their hunting party would throw something at him so he’d be quiet. Worse had been when he would sing to keep himself awake on watch. His brother had had a voice like a dying bird, and he’d known and enjoyed using it. 

For all Red Harvest preferred to keep his own thoughts to himself, Wild Horse had liked everyone to know his. It had been a joke for everyone, that when Red Harvest was born, Wild Horse had taken his voice for himself as well. 

He does not think of Wild Horse with sadness. Not really. His brother had been good to him, his friend above all others. Thinking about him usually just allows Red Harvest to remember being happy. 

He touches the words on his side. They’ve never felt as the raised ink of a tattoo, or the dried crack of paint. They are in his skin, a pigment sunk into his veins.

_“I know you can understand me.”_

Wild Horse had met the woman who had bore the mark that answered his some time ago, long enough to give Red Harvest his nephew and niece. Her mark had been two painted horses, kicking, over her hip. She’d shown Red Harvest, laughing. 

But Wild Horse had said though, one night, when Red Harvest was fletching arrows and Wild Horse was sitting with his sleeping son in a sling, his wife, heavy with their daughter and resting in the lodge with the other women, “I think mine is a sign of what’s to pass.”

Red Harvest had asked what he meant. 

“Two at rest,” his brother had said, his hand over his mark. “And two in flight.”

He remembers telling his brother he was being stupid. Wild Horse always saw something where there was nothing. 

But then Calling Bird died, in childbirth. And then Wild Horse died.

_“I know you can understand me.”_

Wild Horse had known him so well, and he had made jokes, little jabs. _“So what will he look like? One of the ones with the light eyes?”_

He’d known Red Harvest, even the parts of Red Harvest kept to himself. And he’d known Red Harvest didn’t like light eyes. They bothered him for some reason.

So he’d punched Wild Horse, hard enough his brother had fallen off the rock they’d been sitting on and into the river.

He misses his brother, but not in the way people thought. He misses Wild Horse because he misses companionship, and laughing. He has found no companionship since his brother died. Only his brother ever seemed to understand him, and expect nothing else. 

He does not expect to find any companionship out here, either.

He takes jobs. The men, they pay him for his skills. Red Harvest has always been able to move without sound, kill with no screams, no shouts. Killing is easy. He tracks down other men for the ones in town, men who left debts or bodies, or, in one case, where he is told specifically to bring a man back alive by any means necessary, men who left babies growing in women. 

That one almost makes him laugh, the man pleading with Red Harvest the whole way back, tied to Red Harvest’s horse and forced along. The woman’s father waits in town with the woman, a gun, and a preacher. 

It gives him one more reason to believe he could never understand white people, even if he wanted to. 

He’s given payment in paper and coin for what he does. The wooden settlements they all build, the towns, they like the paper and the coin more than they mind the color of his skin. Red Harvest has little to spend it on, but there are women from other tribes in these towns, some married to white men, but usually to the black ones, and they make him new clothing, new blankets. If they care that he is not of their people, but instead one they have good cause to hate, they do not show it. They like the payment more than they dislike him. 

In all the time, he is only ever refused by one woman. Her husband had brought him to their home, but she spits at Red Harvest’s feet when she sees him, her eyes hard. “I know what you are,” she says, and turns her back on him, walks back into her home.

Her husband, a black man, attempts to apologize, but Red Harvest shrugs him off, and finds another woman in the next town. The first woman likely had a good reason to spit at him. He doesn’t mind. 

He never minds anything, not really.

Sometimes, he catches some of the men in towns looking at him for too long, and not because they want to try and kill him. Sometimes, Red Harvest is bored, and he takes them up on their too-long looks. 

No one ever speaks the words on his skin. Variations of, but never the words, and his mark sits silent and cold.

It’s been many seasons he’s been on his own, away from his tribe, when he meets Sam Chisolm. 

He’s walking the cliffs, when he sees them. An odd party, from what he can make out. When he looks, he sees movement along the top of the rocks; a scout, then, maybe. They’re not stupid, then.

He’s felled a deer when he hears them up ahead. There’s little reason to bother with them, and he makes to head away. But when he turns, the wind blows hard against him.

That’s something to consider. So he turns back towards them, their guns all drawn, some to the cliff, expecting someone other than him. 

They let him come closer, so he can get a better look. One is even a white woman, one of the ones with the brightly-colored hair. 

The old white man who looks at him is shaking. He knows what Red Harvest is. And Red Harvest knows what he is too. That could be a problem. Red Harvest has killed many men, but he’s not very interested in killing a half-crazy old man. 

He waits, watches.

The old man keeps shaking though, and Red Harvest thinks maybe the old man doesn’t really want to kill him either. 

The black man approaches, hands up. A peaceful gesture. He calls himself Sam Chisolm.

Sam Chisolm mispronounces half the words he speaks, not badly enough Red Harvest can’t understand him, but the presumption almost makes him laugh. He thanks Wild Horse for keeping all the laughter, keeps his face solemn when he tests Sam Chisolm. Chisolm doesn’t hesitate, and Red Harvest can almost hear Wild Horse laughing in his ears, at this strange man. 

And then Sam Chisolm puts forth an offer just as strange and interesting as their party, when Red Harvest lets him know he can understand some English. A battle, a real one, not him tracking down some drunken idiot that owed too much payment in town, or killing a fool who had made the wrong man angry. A fight that actually meant something. 

It’s been a long time since Red Harvest actually felt like doing something for some reason other than payment, even if there is payment promised in this, still. But something in Sam Chisolm’s plea calls to him, a part of him long buried, the part of him that longs for something long gone.

He takes his joke as far as he reasons he can, and he thinks maybe Sam Chisolm knows some of it, at least part of it, is a test. Sam Chisolm either believes him, or goes along with it, but either way, Red Harvest agrees. 

He lets them butcher the deer, deciding it’ll be one less chore for him, and will mark him favorably to them. He’s given a larger portion than any of the others, the old white man handling the cooking. He does not meet Red Harvest’s eyes, but Red Harvest has clearly been given the best cut, and more. 

The party isn’t interested in speaking to him, after things have been settled. They think he doesn’t understand them, so they leave him be. But they speak amongst themselves, and don’t exclude him, and he finds he’s missed that more than he realized. Listening long enough, he works out their names.

The old white man’s name doesn’t surprise him. He’s heard of Jack Horne, from some of the elders. Jack Horne does not seem like the man he was told about though. He had heard stories of a fearsome man, an equal in both tracking and a fight. This old man seems scared of things the rest of them cannot see, voices the rest of them cannot hear, and he does not look at Red Harvest. 

He’s heard of this happening to old warriors though. The spirits of the dead following them, whispering in their ears. Red Harvest probably looks like those spirits. Maybe the old man thinks he is one of them. 

The pair are called Billy and Goody. Billy is easily the surer hand of them, and throughout the day, Red Harvest watches them enough to get the idea of things. Goody is some kind of friend to Chisolm. Strange, when he hears enough to know what Goody once was. Red Harvest has only heard about the war in the East, been told by the black men that ventured West afterwards. Their tales are usually very different from the white men’s. 

It doesn’t concern Red Harvest, either way, and it doesn’t seem to concern any of these men.

The other white man is called Faraday. The Mexican man is called Vasquez. They both think they’re funny. Red Harvest thinks they drink from their flasks too much too bother with either of them. 

The woman is called Emma Cullen. She’s the one with the payment, and the town is hers. Red Harvest watches her closely, listens. Through the day, he understands from what he hears that the man they’re fighting murdered her husband. She had sought Chisolm out on her own, an odd thing for a white woman, in Red Harvest’s experience, and Chisolm had found all of them for the task. 

Well, Red Harvest had found _them_. 

He thinks he likes her, as much as he can like anyone. He appreciates people that refuse to be beaten down. And he appreciates people like her, he can admit. Life has been unkind to her, and she intends to be unkind back. 

The man she keeps at her side though, is another story. He’s soft-eyed, soft-spoken, when he speaks at all. Red Harvest watches him, confused. This is not the sort of man that fights battles like this one, but here he is, and always close to her. Red Harvest knows his own interests, and the men that share them; this man is not seeking to bed this woman, but he follows her. 

He wonders if she is his sister, but if they are brother and sister, neither say where Red Harvest can hear.

The man says nothing to him, but throughout the day, Red Harvest catches him looking at Red Harvest, more and more. It’s not the sort of look Red Harvest knows of men like them, but almost like he’s trying not to laugh. Red Harvest cannot work him out, and he never likes it when he can’t get an idea of someone. Not knowing the people he’s fighting with can get him killed. 

Or maybe he’s just been bored. 

The heat of the day has most of the other men shedding their coats when they make camp for the night, still against the safety of mountain rock, all of them rolling up their sleeves. The man beside Emma does not. He takes his coat off, but his sleeves stay down. While Red Harvest watches, Emma sits in front of him, and he twists her hair up onto her head, to get it off her neck. They’re sitting just below where he is, fletching arrows. 

“Stop letting Faraday bully you, Teddy,” she says. That’s his name then. “I’ve only got so many bullets to waste.” Maybe she _is_ his sister. 

“He doesn’t mean any harm,” Teddy says, softly. Through and through, the man is soft, then, because Red Harvest has heard enough to know Faraday is the kind of man that means harm, even if Teddy is too stupid to work it out. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Mr. Chisolm has him agreeing to fight, and we need everyone we can get. If he wants to try and get my goat in the meantime, I can handle it.” Red Harvest rethinks his previous thought. He’s never heard that phrase before, but he thinks he has the idea. 

“Teddy Q, don’t you think for one second I’m so naive I don’t know exactly what Faraday has been thinking he can get out of you,” she says sharply.

Red Harvest has to work to keep his face blank at that, and when Teddy says, “I’m sure you mean whatever liquor I have on my person, and nothing at all more vulgar,” Red Harvest actually has to look away, so neither of them catch his smile. “Emma, I’ve been handling men like Faraday since I was fifteen. You don’t need to worry. He wouldn’t say no, don’t get me wrong, but he don’t mean it, not really.” 

He looks down at them, from his perch, and finds Teddy looking up at him. Emma is leaning back on one of his knees, fixing her boot laces. She bats at him when he shifts, and Teddy looks away from Red Harvest, putting his leg back where it was for her. 

It reminds him of Wild Horse and himself. They used to sit like that a lot, when they were taking turns braiding one another’s hair, fixing their own boots, or whatever needed doing. He’d ended up taller than Wild Horse, not a hard thing to do, and over the years, he’d usually been the one being leaned on, his brother smoking or eating while Red Harvest watched the world around them. 

Sometimes, on watch, they’d sit back to back, using each other as support. Red Harvest would usually end up elbowing his stupid brother, when Wild Horse would insist on noisily eating something with his mouth open, annoying Red Harvest. Worse if he would _sing_. 

Emma has writing on her collarbone, he notices. It’s too small for him to make it out, and her shirt mostly covers it. Words her dead husband spoke to her, maybe. 

_“I know you can understand me”_

Red Harvest is hot enough he would usually take his vest off by now. But he never shows his side in company. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Emma turn and rifle through Teddy’s abandoned coat, until she produces a flask. She takes a long sip, and settles herself with her back against Teddy’s shoulder now, Teddy resting against the rock Red Harvest is sitting on. “Christ, Teddy Q, what is this?”

“Ainsley gave it to me before she packed up her and the children. Haven’t had more than a sip, myself. Let Faraday have the other one.” Red Harvest only watches idly, his eyes on the cliffs and the horizon more than them. “Considering how Robbie drank, best be careful with it.”

Emma sighs, loud enough Red Harvest can hear it. “Can’t even blame her. Wish I could, but I can’t.” She takes another long drink, but then hands it to Teddy. “Don’t let me have that back unless Faraday starts talking at me again.” 

It’s a strange surprise, when Teddy offers the flask up to Red Harvest, then. White people usually don’t care to drink from the same things he has drunk from. He shakes his head, in any case. He doesn’t like being drunk, not in this sort of situation. Teddy shrugs, and takes a drink himself before setting it aside. 

They stay below him, Emma between Teddy and the rocks. Red Harvest knows they’re both still awake, long after the others are asleep, and when he checks, he sees Teddy pointing up at the sky, speaking to her quietly. If he concentrates, still keeping his eyes on the horizon, he hears what he’s saying. 

“...the girl again went back to the slow drip of water, and again she stood and waited for the dipper to fill. She was so tired, and hot, but she was determined to make her way back to her mother. But again, she met a beggar on the path, this time an old man, slumped over. He pleaded with the girl for a drink, and again, she gave the dipper to the beggar.”

“Should have drank the water herself,” he hears Emma murmur. 

“The beggar didn’t drink the water though. This time, the beggar stood up, and cast aside his disguise, showing himself to be a fairy prince, clad in gold and gems like starlight. He poured the water out on the ground, and when he did, the clouds overhead grew fat with rain, ending the drought. Then he took the girl’s dipper, and threw it into the sky, now made of diamonds, to become stars.” 

Red Harvest is listening, now, he cannot deny it. 

“I don’t get it,” Emma says to him. 

“Even when you have next to nothing, be kind,” Teddy tells her, but Red Harvest could have guessed that himself. “The girl never thought she was going to get anything out of it. And she was hot and tired and thirsty, but she still gave the water to those who had less.” 

He hears rather than sees her smack him. “You’re too soft, sometimes.”

“Maybe,” Teddy says to her. “Do you want to hear another one?” 

Red Harvest finds himself hoping she says yes. It’s been a long time since he heard stories about the stars. He hadn’t known he missed them, but he has, he realizes. 

She hums something that must mean _yes_ , and he listens in. 

“See, right there? That real bright one? That’s Sirius, the Dog Star.” He tells another story, about some woman being guarded by a dog that failed to save her from being stolen by a god, but after that, Emma has fallen asleep, and Teddy doesn’t talk anymore. When Red Harvest checks again, he seems to be asleep, his hat over his eyes. 

Sam Chisolm and Jack Horne are both asleep, and he thinks Vasquez and Faraday are too, though he can’t see them too well. Red Harvest had taken first watch when Sam Chisolm asked, in his bad accent, so it’s not surprising it’s just him, mostly. Goody and Billy are clearly still awake, Billy sharpening his knives, one by one, Goody sitting quietly, closer to the fire. 

Goody and Billy both have marks on their arms, but while Billy’s looks like Red Harvest’s, Goody’s isn’t like anything Red Harvest has ever seen, some strange mix of circles and lines. Sitting so close to the fire, Red Harvest has a clear look at it.

He understands better, when Billy has finished with his knives, and put them all back in place. Billy looks up at Red Harvest, with a question in his eyes, before he hitches his chin at Goody, the other man still sitting and staring at nothing. Red Harvest knows the question, and shrugs a shoulder, so he’s not surprised when Billy goes to sit behind Goody and pull Goody into his arms, hiding his face in the crook of Goody’s neck. 

From where Red Harvest sits, he can see Billy rub the strange mark on Goodys arm, and can hear him say something in what must be his own language.

Goody laughs, and now Red Harvest has the idea of how things are. 

The pair of them settle down themselves, and even from where he sits, Red Harvest can hear Billy singing, something low, and not in English. They do not cling to one another, but they lie close. While his watch goes on, he notices how Goody shakes in his sleep, and sees how Billy wakes, turns and presses a hand to Goody’s back, saying something, until Goody stills again. 

He thinks he might be jealous. Goody is a white man, and Billy is not, but clearly their words are one another’s, and they do not seem to feel the differences. 

Red Harvest will not know that companionship, he is sure. 

Vasquez wakes, and takes over watch. Red Harvest sleeps, and tries to think of nothing. 

Outside of the town, _Rose Creek_ , he hears them all call it, Sam Chisolm tells him what to do, not that Red Harvest needed telling. He knows what he’s good at. He walks the rooftops, and make sure no one knows he’s there, and that the men down below don’t know the men on the rooftops are no longer there. 

The men on the rooftops never even hear him. The first man, he stabs under his right arm, holding the man in place, hand over his mouth, and when all the blood has poured from the man, Red Harvest leans him up against the post the man had been leaning on when Red Harvest approached. 

The second man is easier. He’s sitting, smoking, and Red Harvest sticks a knife in his neck, then leaves the body as it was. 

There are many men, and Red Harvest kills them all quickly, quietly, until the man in the street calls out for them. Red Harvest lets that body fall, so the man in the street knows how it is. 

He notches arrows and lets them fly, killing men that are trying to kill his party, and the ones that run too. He knows what kind of men run; the kind who will have too much to say to no one who needs to hear it.

It’s over quickly. 

When he drops down to the ground, he hears Vasquez and Faraday counting kills; he has little interest. He’s heard enough of that sort of thing over the years with the hunting parties, and he’d been tired of it before he was barely half-grown. It’s never mattered to him. Wild Horse had enjoyed it as much as everyone else, but Red Harvest had never cared. One more dead man was one less man trying to kill him, and that was all that mattered to him. 

But Sam Chisolm whistles, and Red Harvest notches an arrow, seeing what Sam Chisolm sees; the coward hiding under the walkway. He crawls out, and Red Harvest sees the gun on his belt, and the silver star on his coat. He knows enough to know what this man was supposed to be, and he lowers his bow, no longer threatened. 

A man who hides during a battle is no one he needs to worry about. 

Red Harvest catches the looks the townspeople give him, when lured out, give Billy, Sam Chisolm, and Vasquez as well, but mostly him. The children stare, because all children stare, but the stares from their parents have thoughts behind them, thoughts Red Harvest knows well. 

Emma Cullen and Sam Chisolm speak. Teddy Q speaks. 

When they are finished, Red Harvest turns with the others.

To his side, he hears one man demand, “What are you thinking, bringing one of them here?” to Teddy. Red Harvest had hardly noticed him coming up beside him. 

He blames it on the heat of the fight still thrumming in his ears. Besides, it’s not as though this man is a threat to him. The other man though, he sounds like a problem. 

Softly, Teddy says, “I was thinking we needed men who knew what they were doing.” 

“And we all know one of his kind knows just what he’s doing -” Problem, then. Red Harvest’s hand falls to his long knife. 

Less softly though, far less softly, Red Harvest hears Teddy reply, “Better than the rest of us, letting Bogue run roughshod over us, steal what we’ve worked for, what we’ve built! Murdering our own and demanding we leave them lying in the dirt for the flies and the crows! Starving the men in the mines, until they fall down dead themselves, and we have to stand here and watch! I’m done, Michael! Bogue wants me dead, wants to take the life I built, than I’m going down fighting, beside anyone who will stand with me.” 

The man says to Teddy, “You want to ally yourself with the Devil, Teddy Q, that’s on you. But me and mine, I don’t owe no Mexican or Negro nothing. And I sure as hell don’t owe no redskin.” Red Harvest has heard that word before, heard all those words. But then the man says, “I don’t want no money from a molly in my name neither,” and spits at Teddy’s feet before turning and walking away. 

Red Harvest doesn’t understand the exchange, but it must not be a new one, because all Teddy does is murmur to himself, “Always got to get that dig in, don’t you?” He notices Red Harvest, but just nods at him, before finding his place at Emma’s side. 

He wants to ask, he realizes, but he doesn’t. 

There’s too much noise and movement, really, half the town packing up and leaving. More than one look at him when they leave, talking to each other, hiding their children from him. He rolls his eyes, and works on his arrows, listens to the others, though he keeps some distance. Faraday and Vasquez are wearing on his patience.

The inn serves them food Red Harvest would sooner feed to the dogs, and he sets it aside. 

He hears Sam Chisolm make his joke about Jack Horne. He hears Jack Horne make his joke about Red Harvest. 

He’s never scalped a man, never cared enough to bother with the trouble of it. He does not laugh. They think he does not understand them, so it doesn’t matter, not really. But as they get drunk, their jokes and stories louder, he considers it, if only so he can have some silence.

Instead, he slips out with his bow, determined to find something to eat, and somewhere quiet, where he could hear his own thoughts.

He kills a fat rabbit with his bow, skins it and dresses it, and has it cooking over the fire, when he notices footsteps in the dirt. He doesn’t look; he knows that step by now. Teddy Q sits beside him in the dirt, and Red Harvest allows it. 

They sit in silence for some time, Red Harvest falling back on his elbows as the rabbit cooks, Teddy leaning forward.

“I know you can understand me,” Teddy says, finally, and the words on Red Harvest’s side _burn_. 

Gentle, soft. A _joke_.

He never once thought that was how he would hear the words. 

Teddy answers the question Red Harvest has not voiced. “You’re not as good at play-acting as you think. I’ve seen you have to catch yourself from laughing more than once, and I know you were listening when I was talking to Miss Emma.” He looks at the fire, not Red Harvest. “Don’t blame you for having your joke.”

The rabbit is finished, so Red Harvest takes it off the fire, setting it on the plate he borrowed from the inn. He might give it back, if any of them live through this, so he counts it as borrowing. 

His side doesn’t hurt exactly, but the burn is still there, enough he offers some to Teddy. 

“Rabbit?” Teddy asks, and Red Harvest nods. “If you don’t mind sharing, I’m not opposed to food that Mrs. Roberts’ hasn’t had a chance to put salt on.” Red Harvest lets himself smile, and uses his knife to cut off a piece for him. “Never had much luck with hunting, myself. Ms. Emma was always the real hunter amongst the three of us.” Red Harvest pauses in cutting off his own piece, raising his eyebrows. “Matthew and me were pretty much useless outside of town life. Always have been. But I got lucky, had more education than most, so I’m good with numbers, and I’ve got nice handwriting. Helps that I can spell. And Matthew always had a good hand with fixing things. So we could work in town. If it weren’t for Emma though, we’d of both been lost. I’ve never shot a gun in my life, and while Matthew could fix them just fine, he couldn’t hit a barn from ten paces.” 

Red Harvest still doesn’t say anything. In all these years, he’s never once considered what he would say to the person who spoke the words on his side. It never seemed important, because it was never going to matter. 

It was not supposed to be a soft-eyed man who said them, and he was not supposed to say them so easily. 

“I tried to help,” Teddy says, without being asked. “I never thought Bogue would actually do it. But then he did, and when I tried to step forward, one of his men beat me into the ground. Never felt so useless in my life. I didn’t even know how to fight back. Still don’t.” 

He almost reaches out, but doesn’t. He eats his food, cutting more off for Teddy when he does. 

They finish the rabbit, and Teddy tips back beside him, into the grass. “See that one?” Teddy asks, pointing up into the night sky. He takes Red Harvest’s hand, when Red Harvest shakes his head, and points it out to him. “That’s Sagittarius, called The Archer. See, there’s his bow,” he moves Red Harvest’s hand as he explains, picking out the shape. “And there’s him, a centaur. A centaur is a creature half horse, half man. The story says that a centaur invented archery in their land, and when he died, the Muses, a group of women who ruled over the arts, asked that the King of the Gods cast him into the stars, so everyone would remember him.”

Red Harvest thinks, for a moment, to speak. To tell Teddy his own people’s story of the bow, and how they learned it. 

But a voice calls out in the darkness, “Teddy Q., are you out here?” 

Teddy sits up, looking out. “Do you need me, Emma?” 

“I’m headed in for the night, is all,” she says, coming closer. Red Harvest sits up too, watching her. She nods at him, when she gets close enough, then turns back to Teddy. “Wanted to make sure you were alright.” Red Harvest remembers she still thinks he doesn’t understand her, when she asks, “What are you doing out here with him?”

“He’s quieter company than the rest of them,” Teddy says, getting to his feet and walking over to meet her. “Ms. Emma Cullen, I am starting to think you have what the preacher would call a filthy mind.” 

“As though you’ve ever given one damn what the preacher had to say,” she replies. “And don’t you give me no lip, I’ve had about enough for the day.” She grabs at his shirtsleeve, keeping her shawl wrapped tight around herself with the other hand. “How’s your chest? All that riding can’t have been good for it.” 

“It’s better. He didn’t get me too bad.”

“Don’t lie to me, you’re not good at it,” she says. Red Harvest is inclined to agree. Even he had spotted that one. “Don’t stay out here too long. You need some rest in a proper bed, work we’ve got waiting for us in the morning.” 

“I won’t,” he promises her, then leans forward and kisses her on the temple. “Go on in, Ms. Emma.” 

She nods at him, then nods at Red Harvest. He nods back, and she turns back towards the buildings. 

Teddy sits back down beside Red Harvest. “She’s sleeping at the boarding house. What with half the town having run off, plenty of empty beds. Good thing, because she was sharing with me before we went off to find Mr. Chisolm. Two nights on the floor was about all my back could take.” He doesn’t need to explain why she had chosen Teddy’s bed. Returning to the one she had shared with her dead husband is a pain Red Harvest has seen before. Wild Horse had never returned to the dwelling he slept beside Calling Bird in after her death, instead sharing Red Harvest’s space with the rest of the men. 

Calling Bird’s older sister had taken the children with no argument. She and the wife of their brother had still been nursing their own babies. It had made sense for them to take the children. Wild Horse had never recovered from Calling Bird’s death. 

Sometimes, Red Harvest wondered if Wild Horse had welcomed death that day, so he could join her. Maybe Teddy worries the same thing about Emma Cullen, and this coming fight. That she intends to die, so she might find her husband again. 

He reaches out, and places his hand on the back of Teddy’s neck. His hair is soft, his skin cool. He can feel how the man shakes, hears him try and catch his breath, but when he looks at Red Harvest, while his eyes are wet, he doesn’t fall apart. He undoes the bandanna around his neck, and wipes at his face, but after that, he settles. 

“I don’t intend to die here,” he says to Red Harvest. “If that’s what happens, then that’s what happens. But I like to believe that justice finds all men, even men like Bogue, and McCann, and Mr. Denali.” That name startles Red Harvest. 

He squeezes Teddy’s neck, and Teddy looks at him. 

“No one’s told you about Mr. Denali?” Red Harvest shakes his head. “He’s from your tribe, from what I’ve been able to understand. Comanche? I don’t speak the language myself, not like Mr. Chisolm, but I know some words in a couple of them, enough I can usually tell the difference.” Teddy rolls his shoulders, and Red Harvest loosens his hand. “Mr. Denali works for Bogue. Far as I can tell, he spends his time tricking your sort into getting worked to death in Bogue’s mines, and killing anyone Bogue tells him to.” Red Harvest’s blood runs hot, and hotter when Teddy says, “Seems dishonest to me, especially since he still wears your colors and your clothes. People trust him, and then they’ve come to me, asking me to explain the contracts they signed. Mr. Denali reads and writes in English just fine, so he goes off and finds men who trust him, who can’t read English, and he tells them to sign their lives away to Bogue.” 

Red Harvest presses his hand between Teddy’s shoulder blades, and the writing under his vest _burns_. 

“You’ll know him when you see him,” Teddy says. “Wears his hair long, and a lot of yellow. Doesn’t paint his face much, not like you.” Of course he wouldn’t. The man takes a white man’s money, and enslaves their own people, why would he dare to wear a warrior’s face when he does it? “Him and McCann,” Teddy continues. “They’re the worst sort of people. Bogue is one beast, but they’re the sort of men who have no trouble with hurting their own for money. Bogue don’t care one way or another where that labor comes from. But Mr. Denali finds your sort, and McCann finds the Scottish and the Irish who got away from the railroads. They get used up, and then used some more, until they fall down dead. And Mr. Denali and McCann, they don’t care.”

What the other men do, Red Harvest does not care. He has a focus for his anger now, a man for his knife to kill. 

“You’ll really stay?” Teddy asks, getting his attention again. “I know the money ain’t much, but it’s all we have. Even put my parents’ wedding rings in there. Ms. Emma was going to put hers in, but I couldn’t put her through that. Not like my parents are around to miss theirs.” Red Harvest doesn’t care about the money. He cares about a fight. And Teddy’s already offered him compensation, even if he doesn’t know it; Red Harvest will find this Denali on the battlefield, and he will kill him. 

He nods. He will stay. 

His hand falls when Teddy stands. “Thank you,” he says. “Even if some in town aren’t properly grateful, I am.” 

This is when he should speak, Red Harvest thinks. This is when he should say something, the words that must be somewhere in Teddy’s skin. He should speak. 

“I’m headed to bed,” Teddy says, before Red Harvest can think of anything. “Plenty of beds empty if you’d rather sleep inside.” He waves his good night to Red Harvest, and turns and walks away, to the same building Emma had gone to. 

He rarely sleeps in towns. Few towns will allow him. 

But this night, he rises, and goes back to the inn. His things are where he left them at the table, Vasquez and Faraday still sitting up, playing cards, and more drunk than they should be. 

Vasquez hitches his chin at Red Harvest, and gestures at his things. “You’re back!” He cheers, and so does Faraday. Red Harvest rolls his eyes. “ _Bag is right there. Made sure none of those locals made off with it,_ ” he says in Spanish. 

Red Harvest nods. “ _Thank you,_ ” he says, without thinking. He’s worked with Mexicans enough over his whole life that he knows the language about as well as English. 

Teddy is right. He’s not as good at playing dumb as he thought, to have done something so careless.

But both men are drunk, and neither notice. 

Upstairs, the rooms unoccupied have the doors open. There are few people left to work, and they’re likely in their own homes tonight. Red Harvest chooses one with a window that allows him easy access to the rooftop, just in case. 

There’s a pitcher of clean water, some cloths, and a bowl sitting on a table. Some thoughtful girl, if he had to guess, thinking of those that were staying behind. He washes up, and strips down, since he has the opportunity. 

There’s a looking-glass on the table, fogged around the edges. In the candlelight, Red Harvest uses it to look at his side. It’s backwards, in the glass, but he knows the words backwards and forwards by now. 

_“I know you can understand me.”_

He puts the glass down, and places his hand over the words. This should change nothing. He should not care that the white man who spoke the words said them so gently, with a smile. He should not care about how soft the man is, but that he was willing to defend Red Harvest. He should not care that Teddy thought to thank him.

He should not care that Teddy did not mind drinking from the same flask as Red Harvest. 

None of it should mean anything. 

So why is Red Harvest in this room, if for no other reason than that he had thought maybe some of Bogue’s men, or others, sensing weakness, would come this night, and Teddy is sleeping here? 

It’s nothing, he tells himself. He’s tired, is all, and he wants to sleep inside on something softer than the ground. 

The bed is fine. He sleeps well, and wakes early. He goes downstairs, and the kitchen girls, what few of them are left, give him water to wash his face, and a few sage leaves to chew on to clean his teeth. One woman offers to shave his head for him, but the stubble isn’t prickling just yet, so he shakes his head. They give him food; eggs and bread and salted pork, with coffee. 

Red Harvest does not eat the pork, but he’s not stubborn enough to deny he enjoys coffee, and the women make it strong, and give him sugar for it too. 

He’s sitting at a table, enjoying it, when Vasquez stumbles downstairs, still smelling of whiskey and yesterday. He sits beside Red Harvest and the women fuss, finding him breakfast as well, even while Vasquez eats the salted pork Red Harvest has set aside. After he’s had some coffee, and some more food, more than Red Harvest can believe, Vasquez squints at him, and asks, in Spanish, “ _Just the whiskey telling me stories, or did you know Spanish last night?_ ”

Red Harvest looks at him, long enough Vasquez sits back with a suspicious face, but then Red Harvest just finishes his coffee, and pours himself some more. 

Vasquez points at him. “You jackass,” he drawls, in English. 

“ _You’re still drunk_ ,” Red Harvest says to himself, in his own language, because Vasquez probably is, and Red Harvest doesn’t have the patience for this. Not after last night. He says it as though he’s confused though, and Vasquez narrows his eyes at him. He thinks he’s caught Red Harvest out, but he can’t be sure.

Still, Vasquez points at him with his lit cigarette, and says, in Spanish, “ _Jackass_.”

Red Harvest does not react.

He stays at the table, drinks coffee, and steals the bread the women serve Vasquez, as the others wake up and join them. He likes the bread. It’s the good, dark kind, and he likes butter. The women put out slabs of it, soft and warm, and he eats as much as he can. 

Billy and Goodnight are down at the table next. They’re quiet, mostly speaking and gesturing to one another and sharing a cigarette while they eat, Billy’s arm draped across the back of Goody’s chair. They share food too, Billy taking the bacon on Goody’s plate, Goody taking the eggs off Billy’s. 

Red Harvest watches. He watches, and now he knows that it is jealousy stirring inside of him. 

He knows he is, as he watches, and sees Goody fix Billy’s hair without being asked, brushing what’s falling loose back and tucking it back up with the rest. They both have their shirt sleeves rolled up, their words shown. 

He’s jealous. He’s jealous that this pair have one anothers’ words in their skin, but he cannot speak still. What is he supposed to say? His words burned when Teddy Q. spoke them but what is _he_ supposed to say?

The rest join them, one by one, but Sam Chisolm says little until Emma Cullen walks downstairs, followed by Teddy. 

There’s an empty seat between Red Harvest and Billy, and an empty one beside Sam Chisolm. Emma Cullen takes the seat by Sam Chisolm. So Teddy takes the seat by Red Harvest, and Red Harvest is stubborn, but the same way he is not stubborn enough to admit he enjoys coffee, he cannot deny that it’s exactly where he wants the man. 

He spares a look for Red Harvest, smiling. 

The words in his side buzz, like an insect flying by, only beneath his skin now. 

Sam Chisolm talks, explains what they’re going to need to plan for. He says things in both English and Comanche, but when he very badly mispronounces the word for _trenches_ , Red Harvest only understands him because he said it in English as well. 

Beside him, he sees Teddy glancing at him when Sam Chisolm speaks Comanche. The situation is bad, but he’s still finding something funny, even if it is just Red Harvest playing this game.

It’s a long day of work. Red Harvest spends it picking out the best spots in the town to position himself, where there’s shelter, and shield from the sunlight. He’s a good archer, he knows, but even he cannot hit a target with the sun in his eyes. The locals, including Teddy, fill and stack bags of dirt, to make thicker walls. 

Red Harvest watches him work, when they cross paths. 

When Red Harvest finds himself a corner to sit in, needing a rest, he’s surprised when the window opens, and Teddy climbs out onto the roof. “Thought I saw you lurking around up here,” he says. “Everyone’s breaking to eat. Figured you wouldn’t be too interested in the crowd.” He comes closer, and Red Harvest sees he has something in his hand, a bag, and a bottle in the other. “Not much, just what I was able to wheedle out of Violet. Wasn’t all that eager to eat with everyone else myself.”

The bag has more bread in it, and some cold chicken, and hard cheese, all wrapped in cloth. Red Harvest is grateful for it, only now acknowledging he’s hungry. He’s more thirsty than anything else, his own canteen having run empty too long ago, but after Teddy takes a swig of the bottle, he hands it to Red Harvest. “It’s ginger water, so it’s got a bite,” he warns. 

He’s had it before, so he’s not surprised at the taste. He’s thirstier than he thought though, and he drinks more than he means. But Teddy doesn’t seem to mind, taking another swig of it before setting it aside. 

It shouldn’t mean anything. It should mean _nothing_ that Teddy thought to bring him food, and will drink from the same bottle he has. 

But the words on his side burn, even if he’s just imagining it. 

Teddy doesn’t take much of the bread, and when Red Harvest hitches his chin at it, and looks at Teddy, he says, “Still not sure how you managed to get the bread off Mr. Robicheaux’s plate. I was between the two of you and I didn’t even see you do it.” 

Red Harvest smirks. It hadn’t taken much to swipe it off Goodnight’s plate, but he’d thought no one had noticed, everyone’s eyes on Sam Chisolm at the time. 

“Couldn’t get any butter though,” Teddy says, sounding sorry. 

He should say something. There must be something he could say, something that matches the words that are hiding somewhere on this man’s skin. 

But if he knows them, they don’t come to his tongue. So he says nothing. 

They eat together in silence, but once they’re done, Teddy does not leave his side. He stays, and Red Harvest does not move, when, eventually, their shoulders touch, and they are truly sitting side by side. He has never sat like this with a white man, but he does now. He has missed it, being touched. He thinks Teddy might have been the first person to touch him openly, when he took Red Harvest’s hand in his, and showed him the story in the stars.

Eventually, Teddy lets his weight rest on Red Harvest, and Red Harvest doesn’t mind. He’s against Red Harvest’s left side, where the words he spoke are written in Red Harvest’s skin. There’s no feeling of the question other men have asked of him when they come to him, nothing secret. He just seems to want to sit with him.

Red Harvest wants him there. He shouldn’t, but he does. He realizes Teddy is asleep after the sun has moved a bit higher, and settles down himself, allowing himself to rest. Here, in this corner, mostly sheltered, with this soft-eyed man against him, Red Harvest sleeps. 

When he wakes, they’ve both moved, likely without truly waking. Red Harvest has moved into the corner of the post he’d found, and Teddy is sprawled across his chest. Red Harvest only wakes fully because he realizes he is is holding something solid; he has wrapped an arm around Teddy at some point, keeping him close. 

Teddy’s body is pressed against Red Harvest’s left side. 

Carefully, Red Harvest runs his hand down Teddy’s spine. He wonders where they are, the words he is waiting to speak. 

The town is quiet down below, for the most part. Likely everyone else is resting until the sun goes down a bit more. He allows himself to fall back into a half-sleep, holding Teddy and trying to think of what words he could say, or if he should even say them. 

He wakes fully a bit later when Teddy wakes, and carefully pulls himself out of Red Harvest’s hold. 

“Damn it,” he hears Teddy curse, Red Harvest’s own eyes still closed. “Don’t make a fool of yourself.” He’s speaking to himself, not Red Harvest. 

Around them, Red Harvest hears movement starting again. The people have waited out the heat of the day and are ready to get back to work. He should too. Sam Chisolm said he wanted them to re-group again around now. But he does not want Teddy to know he’s awake, that he heard him chastise himself, because he wants to know _why_. 

Teddy does not say though. Instead, he shakes Red Harvest’s shoulder, gently, and says, “Red Harvest, we’ve got to get up. Mr. Chisolm is going to be looking for you.” 

He’s right, so Red Harvest opens his eyes. Teddy is already standing, the bag and bottle in one hand, but he offers the other to Red Harvest. He takes it, even though he doesn’t need it, so he can hold on. He wants to see if he’s been fooled by Teddy’s kindness so far, wants to see him pull his hand out of Red Harvest’s. 

But he doesn’t. 

Red Harvest still doesn’t know what to say, but again, he doesn’t get the chance to even try, because, he hears Sam Chisolm calling for him down below, and he’s the one who lets go. 

“They’ll be looking for me, too,” Teddy says, and makes for the window, climbing back in. 

Annoyed, Red Harvest simply drops down from the roof, right beside Sam Chisolm, startling the man. Good. 

“Now, son,” he drawls, “I’m not all that clear on how much you understand, but I do know you understand what a staircase is.” 

Red Harvest whistles for his horse, and she comes, from where she was drinking from the trough, and he swings up. She whickers at him, and he settles himself more loosely, not wanting to get her ire up, and follows Sam Chisolm and his horse. 

The rest of them join along the way, and Sam Chisolm has them turn to look at the town, and the stretch of land in front of them. 

“Is it just me, or did his face get more unsettling?” He hears Faraday ask Vasquez, and when he flicks his eyes over, he realizes Faraday means him. 

Vasquez looks at him. Red Harvest looks back. 

Then Vasquez shrugs, and says to Faraday, “Think that’s just his face, _guero_.” 

“Nah,” Faraday replies. “See, usually, he just looks like he doesn’t care if he’s got to eat with us or kill us. That face,” Faraday actually points at Red Harvest. “That face has got some intent behind it.” 

If either of them keep talking about him while he’s right here, Red Harvest might take out his annoyance on one of them. Or both of them. 

“Well,” Vasquez says. “Since I think my hair is one of my best features, maybe we shouldn’t get that intent turned on us, eh?” 

“Can’t argue with that,” Faraday agrees, leaning down on his horse. 

“If you boys are quite done tempting fate,” Sam Chisolm says, and they all quiet, turn to him. 

He remembers what Teddy said to him when Sam Chisolm tells them about his plan for the mines, and the explosives. Red Harvest doesn’t care about the explosives. He cares about the men in that mine, that _Denali_ , one of their own, had enslaved them in. 

He wants to kill the men holding the guns.

So he does. 

One man, old enough to be his father, looks at Red Harvest in the aftermath. “You’re Comanche,” he says, in English. Red Harvest nods. The man is not Comanche. Another tribe. But he still steps forward and places his hand against Red Harvest’s horse. “Thank you.” 

“Denali,” Red Harvest says to him, because he will find this man. He will find the man who is one of his in nothing but shared skin. 

The man scowls, shakes his head. “He’s a liar. Tells us there is work here, and we all be paid the same. He does not tell us that no one is paid enough, not even the white men. He does not tell us there is little food, little water. He does not tell us that Bogue owns us when we sign those contracts.”

Red Harvest thinks of his own family, his own tribe. His family and some of the rest have managed to keep this sort of life far away, away from the white soldiers and the places they take his people. But he has heard stories. Stories like this one. But this is different. Denali is a man from his own tribe. 

“We are owned by no one,” he says to this man, in English. 

“Tell that to Bogue,” the man tells him. “But if you can, tell it to Denali with a knife.” 

The man has scars Red Harvest can see above the collar of his shirt. Marks from a whip. “The man in town who writes, he says Denali wears yellow?” He wants to find him easily in Bogue’s men. 

“Teddy Q?” the man asks, his shoulders dropping. Red Harvest nods. “Good boy, but dumb. He tried to help us. But Denali made sure he stopped. Him and McCann, they made sure no one could help us.” He shakes his head, and takes the water when Red Harvest offers his canteen. “He did try though.”

Red Harvest does not touch his side, where the words Teddy spoke are written, but he imagines the sting of them again. 

“How did Denali stop him?”

“A week later, after he tried to help us, when we came back into town, his face was bruised,” the man says. “And we were no longer allowed to speak to the people in town.” He hefts his pick-axe. “This man can be trusted?” He means Sam Chisolm.

Red Harvest thinks about it, then nods. 

“I will speak to the others, then,” the man says, and goes to the rest of the gathering workers. 

The men are starved. Red Harvest wouldn’t think them worth much in the coming fight, except for the anger he knows they carry towards the men who starved them. Anger can go a long way, in his experience. 

During the ride back, the men they freed driving the carts with the explosives, Vasquez rides on Red Harvest’s right side, speaking Spanish, trying to provoke him. Red Harvest has heard worse than Vasquez is willing to push, so he doesn’t listen for the most part, keeping his eyes on their surroundings. 

When Faraday passes them, he says, “Jesus wept, Vas, I done told you you were just drunk.” He takes a swig from his canteen. “He don’t speak Mexican.”

“I know what I heard,” Vasquez refutes, staring hard at Red Harvest in between watching the path. “This jackass is fucking with us, I swear on my mother’s grave.” 

“Don’t be doing that just because you want to be stubborn,” Faraday says, sounding oddly cautious. “It’s bad luck.” 

“Ain’t bad luck if I’m right,” Vasquez reasons. 

“Yeah, well, you ain’t, so knock it off.” 

Back in Rose Creek, things are arranged. Training the men to shoot, to kill. Trenches being dug, covers woven for them. More bags of dirt are stacked. Red Harvest finds handholds and footholds, finds which buildings he can get in and out of, and how easily he can do it. He picks his perches, and makes caches of arrows to hide in them. 

He’s on the roof, sharpening his long knife, when one of the windows open, and Teddy climbs out, his hair wet, in a clean shirt. 

Teddy says nothing, and since Red Harvest still doesn’t know what to say, they sit in silence. 

Eventually, Teddy offers him a flask. Red Harvest thinks on it, then accepts it, taking a small sip. It burns going down, and he coughs, wiping his mouth off and glaring at nothing. 

“Sorry,” Teddy says. “Ainsley’s home brew. She didn’t really call it anything, but it’ll take a bite out of you.” 

Red Harvest tries another sip, then hands it back. Teddy doesn’t drink any of it, instead setting it aside. 

“Vasquez is down there claiming you speak Spanish,” Teddy says, and when Red Harvest glances at him, Teddy is smiling. “You do, don’t you?” Red Harvest just looks away, but his mouth is turning up without his permission. “Makes sense, travelling around the way you must have been. I know enough to get by without making a fool of myself, but I’m not too good with the accent. How many languages do you speak, then?”

He’s not one to give up too much of himself, not even to this man, and the answer warranted doesn’t feel like the right first words. Instead he shrugs, and runs the whetstone down the knife again. 

“If you’ve got any others, I could help,” Teddy offers. “Matthew taught me how. Never used it for much but keeping the kitchen knives sharp, but I know the right way of it.” 

Surprised, Red Harvest hands over the knife he usually keeps in his boot, and sets the whetstones between them. He watches, at first, but Teddy’s hands are easy with the task, so he leaves him to it. 

Besides, he enjoys the company. It’s been so long since he had someone he wanted to sit with, that seemed to want to sit with him. Teddy is comfortable to be around, in an odd way. He’s too soft to be a threat of any sort, not like the other men Red Harvest has worked with over the years. And he doesn’t seem to be asking Red Harvest for anything _but_ companionship. 

That sort of annoys Red Harvest, actually. It shouldn’t, and even he knows he’s being an idiot, in the same way he never bothered to wonder what he would say back to the person who said his words, he also never expected to be rejected like _this_. 

He’s starting to confuse himself in a way he shouldn’t, with what’s coming. 

This shouldn’t matter. It was never supposed to _matter_.

“Alright, there?” 

He hadn’t realized he hasn’t moved for too long, the whetstone and knife both still in his hands. 

He could speak now. 

He _should_ speak now, when there’s no one around to interrupt them. Wild Horse would have known what to say. He always knew what to say, what to do. He’d known how to save Red Harvest’s life that day, and he’d known how to make Red Harvest laugh. 

But he is not his brother, and the words won’t come. 

Thinking carefully, he sets the knife and whetstone aside. Teddy is sitting on his left. The light from the moon and stars, and the windows at their backs will be enough, he’s sure, and he lifts the left side of his vest, so Teddy can see. 

“Oh,” Teddy says, and sets down the other knife and whetstone. “I was right.”

“You were,” Red Harvest says aloud, his nails digging into his palms. Those were not good words. They should have been better. 

But Teddy unlaces the top of his shirt, so the collar falls loose enough he can pull his right arm out. And now Red Harvest understand why he kept his sleeves rolled down. 

It’s big. Much bigger than Wild Horse’s or Calling Bird’s were. 

It starts at his shoulder. A red hawk, lined in black and white, wings spread, and down his arm, more red. Red wheat, a red deer leaping, two red rabbits, and then, flowing as a river, to touch the vein on the inside of his forearm, _red_. A harvest of blood.

Teddy’s mark is not a white man’s words. It is Red Harvest’s name, and it is who he is, the same kind his own people carry.

“Heard your name, and it lit up like a Roman Candle.” He puts his arm back in his sleeve, but Red Harvest hardly notices. 

He always assumed these words meant he would have to answer back as they do. 

“Showed up when I was about seven,” Teddy explains. “My parents almost lost their heads. Was never allowed to take my shirt off around anyone, after it showed up. It wasn’t words, wasn’t like everyone else’s, and they thought it looked a bit heavy for a child to be explaining.” He bows his head. “Seen some of your kind’s marks, when I got older. Wondered if maybe it was one of yours.” He turns, raises his hand, and Red Harvest lets him slide his hand under Red Harvest’s vest, where the words are. “That’s my handwriting.” 

“That’s my name,” Red Harvest says. 

Teddy takes Red Harvest’s hand in his, holding it carefully. “‘Course we run into each other right before we’re all probably about to die.” He lets go. “Seems to always be my luck. That is to say, I have none.” 

This time, Red Harvest picks up Teddy’s hand. He looks at Red Harvest, so Red Harvest reaches out with his other hand, and cups Teddy’s face. “You won’t die,” he says. He won’t let that happen, he decides. 

He doesn’t know what this is. It was never supposed to matter, and he was never supposed to care.

And this soft-eyed man was never supposed to say the words on his side. 

“That’s not a promise you can keep,” Teddy refutes. “Truth is, Mr. Denali has it out for Emma and me. We both made trouble for him. Still surprised he didn’t kill me in front of the church with the rest of them.” 

That name again. He’s never even seen this man, but everything Red Harvest hears just puts him closer and closer to Red Harvest’s knife. “A man at the mines, he said you tried to help?” 

Teddy nods. “Some of the men, they knew what I did in town. So they brought me some of their contracts. They stole them out of the offices, I think. Not hard to do, half the men running that mine did a whole more drinking than anything else.” He scowls now. “Those contracts were as bad as some of the ones I’ve seen the railroads passing around. Men had no idea what they were signing. So I tried to bring it to the sheriff. They weren’t legal. Next thing I knew, Mr. Denali had gotten me good across the face with his hatchet.” 

He runs his thumb over Teddy’s cheekbone. It’s unbruised now, but he’s still angry.

“It’s late,” he says. “Should sleep.” The rest of them in the saloon downstairs will drink well into the night, and while Red Harvest doesn’t mind them, might even admit to liking them, he’s uninterested in joining them. Not right now. 

“You coming with me?” Teddy offers. 

He shouldn’t. This the worst time, and Red Harvest still doesn’t understand what’s changed within him on this, a firm belief he’s carried most of his life suddenly gone when it’s this man. 

“Yes,” he says. 

Teddy’s room is across the hall from his, it turns out. Unlike the one Red Harvest took, bare of everything but the essentials, Teddy’s room is a more permanent place. There are a few books and journals on the desk, along with paper and pencils, and a leather case. The blankets on the bed aren’t like the ones in Red Harvest’s, cheap and common. He has a quilt, and a blanket on the end of the bed that Red Harvest recognizes the pattern of. 

He touches it, and looks at Teddy, curious. 

“Mrs. Jones made it for me,” Teddy explains. “That and the quilt. She mends my clothes for me too, if I need it. It was how she pays me. She’s Comanche, like you. Her husband, Mr. Abel Jones, he, well...he’s a black man, from back east. Was a slave, before the war.” That sounds like a thousand stories Red Harvest has heard before, from other black men. “Neither of them had gotten the chance to learn how to read and write in English, or do sums. I put aside a few hours a week, and in return, I don’t have to worry about being cold at night.” 

It’s been a long time, more than he wants to admit, since he’s seen a blanket like this one. 

The look of it makes him think of his family, of his mother and Calling Bird and her sisters, sitting with the rest of the women, their voices and laughter carrying over to where Red Harvest would sit with Wild Horse and the rest of the young men. He had sometimes wondered what they all found so funny, and why they were usually looking at the men when they would start laughing again. 

When he had asked, once, when he was old enough to be considered a man, but still younger than most of the others, Wild Horse had just told him to be grateful that he would never have a wife. 

He spots something shiny on the stand by the bed. A pendant, of some kind. He picks it up, and turns around. 

Teddy almost looks scared. “I couldn’t,” he says. “I could give up their wedding bands, and everything else I had, but not that.” He takes it from Red Harvest, and opens the pendant. Inside, there’s a lock of braided hair, and a very small photograph. It’s faded, a man and a woman, and a small child. The woman is sitting, the man standing behind her, and the child is sitting in her lap. “My grandmother brought this over when she and me grandfather came here. That’s her hair. And that’s my mother and father, with me. They had it taken soon as I was old enough to hold still. It was just before this showed up.” He hitches his chin at his arm, the arm where Red Harvest’s name sits. “I know I should have thrown it into the payment, they wouldn’t of cared, but...this is all I’ve got left of them. Of any of them.”

Red Harvest knows how Teddy feels, about this little thing, that holds something precious. He understands holding on. He remembers the colorful leathers his brother wore in his hair, and how his niece and nephew now wear the ones Red Harvest wore in imitation of his brother. Maybe they will not remember Wild Horse, not really. But they will wear their hair as Wild Horse did, and he thinks they will hold on to something with them. A memory of love. 

He sits down on the bed, takes his boots off, and beckons. Teddy comes to him with no hesitation, falling into his lap, and kissing Red Harvest. It’s too quick, too much, but Red Harvest keeps Teddy where he is, and starts the kiss over. Slower. Soft. Soft like Red Harvest has never cared to be, but what Teddy needs, what Red Harvest wants. 

There’s little intent from Teddy in the kiss, and Red Harvest is still worn out from the sun. So he turns them, lets Teddy rest against the pillows, and pulls the blankets up. Night has fallen, and it’s cold. 

“Could you hold me?” 

The question breaks Red Harvest’s chest, thinking of what’s to come, and he reaches for Teddy, forces him to settle against Red’s shoulder. He’s always slept on his back, and now Teddy is there, his hair brushing Red Harvest’s throat, his breath hot on Red Harvest’s collarbone. It’s probably not going to work for long, Teddy’s weight on his arm, but it’s good for now, and Red Harvest can run his hand up and down Teddy’s side. 

He holds Teddy against him for awhile, listening to the noise from downstairs, and Teddy’s breathing. “Were you disappointed?” he asks, not even sure Teddy is still awake. 

Teddy doesn’t lie to him. Red Harvest appreciates that. “When I was little,” he admits, “and still believed things people said, about your people. Some of the men in town used to tell stories. Kind of stuff that kept me up at night. Convinced me that Indians were prowling around our home at night, getting ready to scalp us in our sleep.” 

“Never scalped anyone,” Red Harvest scoffs. “Too much work.” 

“How comforting,” Teddy replies, rubbing his hand over Red Harvest’s bare stomach, brushing against his necklace. “But then I came out further West. Figured out for myself that people just like to talk. Don’t mean any of it is true.”

“My brother scalped a few men,” Red Harvest tells him, and feels Teddy move his head to look up at Red Harvest. “They deserved it. Wild Horse didn’t like men who tried to kill him first. Used to say that they could have at least given him a chance to earn it.” 

Teddy is quiet, then asks, “Is your brother dead?” 

Red Harvest hums. “We were scouting for the herd. Wild Horse was spotted by another tribe. Didn’t get a good enough look at them to know who. He made me leave him. I could still get away. He knew he couldn’t.” 

“He must have loved you very much,” Teddy says. “And he must have been very brave.”

Both of those things are true. But it’s not how he remembers his brother, usually. “He was an idiot. Always laughing at something. He’d make up songs when we were riding. He wasn’t a singer.” No, he remembers his brother being a complete fool, making up songs about the dirt and the birds and the rocks, in his bad voice, until half their party would be threatening to shoot him.

But then he had stopped. 

So Red Harvest says, “His wife died. He stopped singing. And then he died.”

“I’m sorry,” Teddy says, his hand moving up to rest over Red Harvest’s heart. “That must have hurt something bad.” 

“She laughed,” Red Harvest says, and his throat gets tight. He doesn’t like thinking about Calling Bird. Because she had laughed. Just like Wild Horse, the pair of them so alike. But she had not died laughing. She had died screaming, the women keeping the men out, and now he remembers one of the old women telling him to keep Wild Horse back. Calling Bird had been screaming, crying, inside the lodge, the sound carrying, and Wild Horse had been trying to push through, go to her. He had done what she said, because he had understood the look on her face. 

He had understood the look all the women wore, as Calling Bird screamed. As the sister he had grown to love screamed in the way people only scream when the end is coming. He had known they were trying to spare Wild Horse seeing what was soon to come. “He loved her.” Because he had. 

Wild Horse had never laughed again after Calling Bird died. But Red Harvest had never wanted to remember how he had been after. He remembered his brother, and Calling Bird as well, when they had been living. He remembered them laughing. 

Teddy rises up, and touches his temple to Red Harvest’s. “If I die in this, I don’t want you to stop your whole life.”

They’ve known one another for so little time. But already, Red Harvest has held this man in his arms, and he understands now why Wild Horse couldn’t bear it. 

“You won’t,” Red Harvest assures him. 

“I told you, Mr. Denali will be looking for me and Emma, and I don’t fancy my chances against him.” 

“I’m going to kill him,” Red Harvest says. 

He’s not surprised when Teddy cups his face, smiling down at him. “Had any money left, I’d put it on you in that fight.” Red Harvest turns his face, nuzzles into Teddy’s hand. “Off chance I live through this, maybe you and me could go into Goodnight and Billy’s line of work.” 

Red Harvest huffs, lets his hand drop down from Teddy’s waist to his ass. “White people don’t like me in their towns.” 

“Think you’ll always be welcome here,” Teddy says, kissing him. “Again, on the off-chance we live.” He stays where he is, a breath away from Red Harvest’s mouth. “You surprised me. You _keep_ surprising me.” He taps their heads together. “How many languages do you speak? I told you, I can get by in Spanish, and German too, and thanks to Matthew, I can swear a lot in Gaelic.” 

He has to think about it. “My own language,” he says. “English, and Spanish. Enough French.” That one he had picked up from the black men that had come West, after the war. “A few words from other tribes.” Teddy looks impressed, and it makes Red Harvest uneasy. “Can only read and write in English. Not very well,” he admits. He’s never had much trouble picking up languages, but for some reason, reading and writing never came easy. He can read warrants, if he’s given enough time, and he understands the numbers just fine, which is all that has really mattered. 

“I could help with that, if you wanted. Not good for much with a gun, but reading, writing, and sums, I’m good with those.” Teddy’s hand has moved from Red Harvest’s face, to play with his necklace. “Surprised you carry a gun.” He hitches his chin at the table, where Red Harvest left his belt. 

“Need it, sometimes.” Not often. He prefers his own weapons, but the gun has been useful. “You don’t?”

“In my line of work, anytime guns come out, it’s usually because I had to tell someone that someone else is getting one over on them. Guns aren’t usually aimed at me, in those cases.” He smiles. “There was one though. Funniest business I ever got involved in.” Red Harvest still has his hand on Teddy’s ass, and he squeezes, making Teddy laugh. “These two women came to me, both of them with marriage licenses, and husbands that had run off with everything they could fit in a saddlebag. But strange thing, see? The name of the husband and the name of the preacher were different on both, but those preachers and those husbands had the same handwriting. Next thing I know, I’ve got three more women with marriage licenses. Different names for both the preacher and the husband, but damn if it wasn’t the same handwriting. Had to tell all those ladies I was pretty sure that the men they’d married was one man, and the preacher was another. Those ladies were not happy. Pooled together the money they had left, and hired themselves a bounty hunter. He found two brothers by the names of Amos and Silas Brown.” He kisses Red Harvest again. “Amos played the preacher, and Silas played the husband. They had a little scheme, you see. Silas would seduce some young widow, and Amos would ‘marry’ them. Then Silas would take everything worth having, ride out on a hunting trip, and disappear.”

Red Harvest will _never_ understand white people. “What happened?”

“Bounty hunter found them both, brought them back. All five of the women had been stewing in their anger for a good two weeks, and longer, by then. Probably explains why I left this boarding house one morning, and both Amos and Silas were stripped naked and locked in the stocks. Ladies took their horses, saddles, their guns. _Everything_. Both of them were standing there, hollering that they’d been robbed. ‘Course, I showed the sheriff the certificates...the old sheriff, mind you, and he told them both they’d gotten off lucky.” Teddy sighs. “Once they’d gotten out of the stocks, and had some pants on though, they tried to come after me. Claimed I’d done them a disservice.” He kisses Red Harvest again. “Ms. Emma had already decided she was going to keep me company until both men left town. So they came into my office, ready to promise fire and brimstone down on my head, only to find themselves on the wrong end of her rifle.” Another kiss, and Red Harvest just barely stops himself from leaning up to Teddy for another. “They left town real quick after that.”

He stands by his first impression of Teddy Q.; he’s soft. Soft eyes, soft-spoken, and soft-hearted. But he can admit maybe he’d misjudged softness, and what it meant. What it meant to him. Teddy is soft, but he isn’t weak. He’s kind, is all. Kinder than someone should be, but in that kindness, Red Harvest sees a different kind of strength. 

He swears he can hear Wild Horse laughing. 

“Were _you_ disappointed?” Teddy asks him.

“I was angry,” Red Harvest confesses.

“I can understand that.” But then he kisses Red Harvest, biting at his lip. “Taking a wild guess though, considering where your hand is, you’re past that.” Teddy breathes out, then says, “If you want me, I’m yours-”

He tips his head up, so Teddy knows just what he wants. They kiss, and Red Harvest slides his hand into Teddy’s hair. It’s still damp, slipping through his fingers, so he gets a tighter grip. When he does though, Teddy shivers against him, making a sound that goes right to Red Harvest’s cock. He pulls now, and Teddy makes the same sound. Better, Red Harvest can feel him against his hip. 

“Please,” Teddy says, straddling Red Harvest. “ _Please_.”

Red Harvest turns them over on the bed, strips Teddy of his clothes, lets Teddy strip him in turn. He touches all of Teddy’s pale skin, kisses the inside of Teddy’s thigh, bare of the dark hair on his legs, bites a mark there when Teddy’s fingers grasp over Red Harvest’s head, and pleads, “ _Yes_ ,” takes what is his to have.

He takes what is his, Teddy’s back to his chest, his face buried in Teddy’s neck. Teddy loops the arm that holds Red Harvest’s name around Red Harvest’s neck as Red Harvest thrusts inside him, and when Teddy spends in Red Harvest’s hand, he gasps, “Don’t stop, don’t, stay inside me, Red Harvest -” And Red Harvest falls over the edge. 

There’s a minute where he has to catch his breath, his cock softening inside of Teddy.

The women left have been good about washing water. Red Harvest watches, when Teddy leaves the bed, cleans himself, and gives Red Harvest a washing cloth himself. He cleans off his own cock, and tries not to laugh when Teddy just flips the pillows. 

“Get your pants back on,” Teddy demands, smiling, just a little, in between kissing Red Harvest. “Unless you want to get caught?”

He’s not wrong, and Red Harvest pulls his breeches back on, watching Teddy dress with regret, even as he slides his own vest back on. The mark on Teddy’s arm is hidden again, but when they lay down, he again rests his head on Red Harvest’s shoulder. The connection between them feels oddly secured now, tied tightly in place.

Against him, Teddy runs his hand up and down Red Harvest’s bared stomach and chest. It’s almost ticklish, but he doesn’t mind. Eventually, he stops, his hand sliding around Red Harvest and staying there. 

His head stops thrumming eventually, his mind and body relaxing enough for sleep. 

When he checks, Teddy’s beaten him to it, eyes closed and breathing steadily against Red Harvest. Before he lets himself fall asleep, he presses his mouth to the top of Teddy’s head.

He wakes first, the sounds of people moving around downstairs rousing him. The light coming through the curtains tells him it’s early, earlier than Teddy probably ever wakes. Teddy had ended up rolling over in his sleep, so Red Harvest can just barely see the mark, the collar of Teddy’s shirt loosened. He places his hand over where he knows it is, under the sleeve, and kisses the part exposed, before getting out of the bed to head downstairs. 

In the kitchen, one of the serving girls shaves his head for him. She asks him in Spanish if he needs help shaving his face, but his beard has always grown in slow, so he shakes his head. She tells him to wait, and scurries off, coming back with one of his shirts. He has a few cotton ones, made for him by a Mexican woman in another town, but this one had gotten badly torn when he was hunting down a bounty. 

It’s been mended. 

“ _It was sitting in the top of your bag, in your room,_ ” she says, looking at her feet. She’s young, half his age if he had to guess. “ _Went up to make sure you didn’t need anything. But I saw that you…_ ” She bites her lip and looks down, but she looks like she’s trying not to laugh. “ _That you needed nothing. But I thought I would mend this for you, anyway. To thank you._ ” 

It’s good work, the tear hardly showing in the dark red cotton. He smiles at her, and says, in Spanish, “ _That was kind. Thank you.”_

She leans over, and almost whispers, “ _You had better be kind to Mr. Teddy Q., or Mrs. Roberta will be very unkind to you.”_ She indicates the older woman who seems to be in charge of the kitchen. 

Red Harvest nods, and she gets back to her work. 

In the saloon, Sam Chisolm, Goodnight, Billy, and Jack Horne are already sitting around a table now. They’re eating, but Red Harvest isn’t hungry yet, and he’s feeling a bit corralled. So he nods to them, but walks outside to the porch instead. 

He has a few cigarettes hidden in his belt. It’s not a habit, not really, not like how it seems to be for the others, but it’s familiar, reminding him of days spent sitting with the other men, sharing them, or a pipe. Listening to the elders telling stories, and his brother and the other men making jokes about said stories. 

The saloon door opens though, and Billy strolls out, lighting a cigarette himself. “Cover his mouth next time,” Billy says. “Some of us were trying to sleep.”

Red Harvest does not react, but it’s a near thing. 

However, Billy then says, “Don’t bother. I’ve been playing your little trick since before you were born.” Red Harvest looks at him, narrowing his eyes. Billy barely spares him a look, before leaning against the post, closing his eyes and exhaling smoke. “You want to keep it up? I don’t care. But don’t insult me.” He takes another hit. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t let Ms. Emma Cullen find out you used her little pet for some fun.”

Now Red Harvest is the one insulted, but he doesn’t know what else to do, except raise his vest, so Billy sees. 

Billy raises his eyebrows, and whistles. Then he rolls up his sleeve, showing Red Harvest the mark on his arm in full. “Can you read it?” Billy asks, and Red Harvest shakes his head. The letters are looping, and too close together. “ _‘Now, now, no need for the knives’_ ,” Billy drawls. “Went off on his little speech. Want to know what his are?” Red Harvest nods now, curious. “ _‘The gods must be fucking joking’_.”

Red Harvest laughs, taking another hit off his own cigarette. 

“What’s in that?” Billy asks, when the smoke reaches him. “That’s not opium, but that’s not just tobacco.” 

“Mostly tobacco,” Red Harvest says, in English, and Billy smirks. 

“Cover his mouth,” Billy says, stubbing out his cigarette and putting it back in his case. “Goody and me, we want to sleep.” He shoulders Red Harvest when he makes to go back inside. “I’m sure your cock is satisfying, but neither of us are interested in hearing its praises.” 

He follows Billy in, intent on breakfast now. Watching Vasquez eat almost puts him off though; he thought Wild Horse had bad manners. He looks away, muttering to himself in his own language, _“Disgusting.”_

He catches Sam Chisolm shrugging at him. _“Been on his own awhile.”_

 _“So have I,”_ Red Harvest replies, but leaves it there when one of the kitchen girls brings him a plate and a cup for coffee. He nods at her, and snatches the kettle on the table before Faraday can grab it, pouring himself some first. Faraday holds up his hands in surrender, only taking it when Red Harvest sets it down. 

There’s sugar on the table. He grabs that too, again just ahead of Faraday, but this time, he says, “Oh, come on now.” 

“Don’t be picking fights you can’t win, son,” Jack Horne wheezes, pointing at Faraday. 

“Long as he saves some for me, we ain’t gonna have no trouble,” Faraday says, watching Red Harvest.

He deliberately puts an extra spoonful into his coffee.

Vasquez leans over the table, and says to Faraday, “I’m _telling_ you, he’s fucking with us.” In Spanish, he says, _“You can’t keep it up forever, motherfucker.”_

Instead of replying to him, Red Harvest turns to Sam Chisolm, and asks, _“What is he saying?”_

_“Don’t worry about it.”_

Beside Red Harvest, he sees the blank look on not only Billy’s face, but Goody’s too. When Vasquez looks away, Goody winks at Red Harvest. It makes sense, Red Harvest guesses. Goody has probably seen Billy do the same thing, played along, and even if he hadn’t worked it out for himself, Billy would have probably told him. 

Sam Chisolm tells him, after they finish, that he needs Red Harvest to ride out and scout for Bogue’s forces in a few days time. He tells Red Harvest that Bogue has the money and the means to hire a hundred men in the time they’ve got, but most of them won’t be worth much. Men that are hardly past being boys, in need of money and glory, for the most part. Probably a few ex-soldiers, like Goody. 

It’s good information. Too good. 

“ _You know this man,_ ” Red Harvest says, leaning back on the porch post. 

“ _I have my own fight with Bogue,_ ” Sam Chisolm admits, and then he unbuttons the top of his shirt, and shows Red Harvest what hides there. He knows that scar. He’s seen it on other black men that have come here, heard their stories. “ _Paths cross for a reason, sometimes._ ” He redoes the buttons, and says, “ _Think you might have your own fight in this too._ ”

“ _He’s a traitor_ ,” Red Harvest all but spits, angry all over again.

Sam Chisolm shakes his hand. “More than you know,” he says, in English. When Red Harvest raises his eyebrows, asking, Sam Chisolm huffs, and says, “Goodnight tells me you understand a little better than you’ve been letting on.” Red Harvest just looks at him, and when Sam Chisolm speaks again, it’s in Red Harvest’s language. “ _Denali still wears the uniform the_ United States Cavalry _gave him_.”

 _United States Cavalry_. 

Red Harvest knows them. He knows them well. He knows their uniforms, and he knows what they did, what they do -

He is going to kill Denali. Arrow, knife, even the gun. He will kill this man. 

He will _kill_ Denali. 

Denali will die for being a traitor, Denali will die for the men in the mines, and Denali will die for the bruise he left on Teddy’s face. He will kill Denali for wearing colors, he will kill Denali for painting his face. He will kill Denali for pretending at being one of theirs, when he wears a white man’s uniform, and takes a white man’s money, to enslave and kill their people. 

He is still thinking on Denali, finding him, while he leans against the railing and smokes another cigarette into the night air. It’s not Teddy who finds him this time, but instead Billy.

Sam Chisolm likely spoke to Goodnight. Goodnight likely spoke to Billy.

And now Billy is here, and saying, “Our overseers weren’t always white. Men who looked like me. Spoke my language. But they worked for the white men.” Red Harvest is still angry. Too angry to bother with speaking. “They spoke my language, looked like me, but they wore their clothes.”

Those blue jackets, with their white stripes. That someone with his skin wears one -

“Don’t let anger make you stupid,” Billy cautions. “I have been down that path. It leads to worse things than you can imagine. You are young, still. You do not understand.” 

Red Harvest smirks, and asks in English, “How old do you think I am?”

“Young,” Billy says. 

“I’ve passed more than thirty years,” Red Harvest replies. 

But Billy just exhales smoke. “And I am old enough to be your father. You are young.” He takes another hit, blows out a ring. “Teddy Q. is young as well. You’re as young as Goody and I were.” Red Harvest decides to light one of his own cigarettes, and Billy lends him a light off his own, holding it out for Red Harvest. “A white man’s words, showing up on my skin. I was angry. I was angrier once I learned to read English. But then he showed me his words. And then I learned who he was. He saw past my skin. And I saw past his.” 

Red Harvest sits, resting his back against the post. “He shouldn’t stay.” Because he wants Teddy Q. to go, to follow the others who have left, and come back when things are finished. 

“This is his home,” Billy says. “He wants to defend it. To fight for it.” Billy kicks at Red Harvest’s ankle. “He’s a shit shot with these old rifles, but he’s been good with a six-shooter. He’s quick, too. Moves quiet.” He kicks at Red Harvest again, more a tap this time. “I am going to my bed, where my man is. I suggest you do the same.”

There’s a quiet, _“come in”_ when Red Harvest taps on Teddy’s door, and when he does so, he finds Teddy sitting up, back to the wrought iron headboard and pillows, a book in his lap. He smiles at Red Harvest, but still says, “Take off your boots first, the girls cleaned the sheets today.” Red Harvest kicks off his boots, and sets his vest on the hook by the door, his belt on the side table, so his weapons are within reach. “Funny thing,” Teddy says, once Red Harvest is settled in the bed. “Little Misses Sol and Josefina made it a point to tell me they’d washed my bedclothes today. Seemed to think they had reason to make sure. They were certainly laughing an awful lot about the chore though. Any idea why?”

He doesn’t know which girl is which, but he can guess the girl this morning was one or the other. “Saw me go into your room,” he explains. “What is that?” As usual, the letters in Teddy’s book don’t look right, once he’s pulled Teddy against his chest, the book still open. He makes out a few of the easier words, but not enough to have any idea what’s written. 

“ _Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ ,” Teddy says. “I got it off a salesman when he came through, but I think you’d like it. Want me to start from the beginning?”

Red Harvest thinks on it. “What’s a ‘league’?” He thinks he’s heard the word before, but the title doesn’t make sense to him. 

“Way of measuring distance. Funny thing, this Captain Nemo is an Indian himself. The sort from India, though.” Again, Red Harvest doesn’t understand, but Teddy works it out on his own. “India is a country all its own, a colony under England. They’re halfway around the world though. Bit of a misunderstanding, when my kind came here.” Red Harvest _still_ doesn’t understand, but he won’t admit it. 

“How are they under the sea?” he asks instead. He’s never seen the sea, but he’s heard stories. The water goes on and on, and is poisonous to drink, full of salt. How can men be beneath it, and breathe? “Don’t they drown?”

“It’s just a story,” Teddy says, laughing. “Captain Nemo builds this ship that can go under the water.” He closes the book and sets it aside, on top of other books. “Like the girl who got her water dipper thrown into the stars.” 

“From diamonds to stars,” Red Harvest remarks, and Teddy laughs. 

“I knew you were listening.” 

It’s kindly said, happy, even. So Red Harvest turns them, bracing himself above Teddy. “I was listening.” He kisses him, Teddy rising to meet him. 

The next morning, he’s drinking his coffee, when Sam Chisolm sits beside him, and says, “Some of us would like to get some sleep,” in English.

Red Harvest says nothing. For one matter, he still really doesn’t understand these people when it comes to sex; white, black, any skin different from his. They’re so determined to behave as though sex doesn’t happen. As for the other matter, he’s not ashamed that he can cause Teddy to call out, to grasp at him and say his name. He does understand that white people can be strange about people like Red Harvest, like Teddy. But Sam Chisolm is not white, and Red Harvest is uninterested in behaving how white people believe he should, or pretending at it with Sam Chisolm.

Sam Chisolm huffs, and says, “Your English is awfully selective, son.”

“ _What?_ ” Red Harvest asks, in his own language. 

“I’m starting to think Vasquez has the right end of things,” Sam Chisolm says, taking a bite of his eggs. 

Red Harvest snatches the bread off Sam Chisolm’s plate, and eats it.

“You little jackass,” Sam Chisolm accuses. 

In response, Red Harvest takes the coffee, and the sugar too, keeping his face blank.

Sam Chisolm gives him a long look, but just drinks his own coffee, when he gets the kettle back. 

He ends up grouped with Vasquez and Faraday for most of the day, Vasquez still trying to get a rise out of him. Red Harvest doesn’t give in, but he thinks he manages to convincingly frown like he’s confused. Any way, he finds himself enjoying Vasquez’s barbs and Faraday’s responses. 

It’s midday when he recognizes he’s enjoying their company, the same way he had once enjoyed sitting amongst the other men of his tribe, listening to jokes and stories while doing chores like these ones. Felling trees, stripping the wood. Laughter, even when they knew the soldiers could be only a day’s ride away, and it could be the last time they might laugh. 

Vasquez gives his canteen to Red Harvest, and Red Harvest takes a drink. But then Faraday holds out his hand, grasping, and Red Harvest passes it over. Faraday drinks straight from it, then passes it back to Vasquez. 

Vasquez empties it, then knocks it into Faraday’s chest. “Go refill it,” he orders. “And grab some more nails.” When Faraday starts to groan, Vasquez snaps, “ _Get to it, jackass._ ” 

“Still don’t speak no Mexican, so I’m going to assume that one means ‘handsome’, too,” Faraday calls over his shoulder, heading out. 

It’s been an easy morning, so Red Harvest thinks on it, then says, “ _You’d think he’d learn it’s Spanish,_ ” in Spanish, to Vasquez. 

He gets Vasquez staring at him, then looking around the empty yard, before swearing in Spanish. “ _I knew it! You’re just fucking with me, you bastard!_ ”

Red Harvest shrugs, and gets back to what he was doing, Vasquez giving him sharp, irritated looks and grumbling under his breath in Spanish. 

When the sun is too much, they break with the rest of the town, Red Harvest choosing to sit on the porch with the others today. Vasquez is trying to convince Faraday that he’s not crazy, and Red Harvest can understand them just fine, but Faraday doesn’t seem to believe it. 

“I’m telling you, he spoke Spanish!” Vasquez hisses. 

“I don’t know, Vas, I’ve heard him talk, and it sounds like Mexican. I’m thinking you’ve just had a bit too much sun.”

“ _Cabron_ , are you saying you think Spanish sounds like whatever he’s speaking?” Vasquez sounds like he can’t believe Faraday is that damn stupid, but Red Harvest knows white people, and white people always think they all sound the same. 

So when Faraday says, “Truth be told, you all kind of sound alike to me when you stop speaking English,” Red Harvest finds himself meeting Billy’s eyes. He’s rather sure he’s making the same expression Billy is. 

Emma Cullen and Teddy come to the porch, Emma with a rifle at her hip, Teddy with his hands in his pockets. He smiles when he sees Red Harvest, but doesn’t say anything. He does sit on the porch floor, by Red Harvest’s feet, and since Billy is leaning against the post that Goody had his back against, Goody sitting on the railing, their shoulders pressed together, Red Harvest moves so Teddy knows he can put some weight on Red Harvest’s leg. 

To the side, he hears Faraday mutter, “Told you so,” and when he looks, he sees Vasquez hand over five cigarettes. 

Idiots.


End file.
